Video – The Making of the Pano Print Preset

Well folks, as many of you have realized, the 5-across/pano print preset from Monday met with some challenges Instead of trying to figure out the Mac/PC/Lightroom incompatibilities, I figured I’d just show you how to create the preset itself since I do think it’s a really cool one. Along the way you’ll pick up some tips about good features to use for this in the Print module as well as tweaking the Page Setup options to get the right sized print. Enjoy.

Matt is the Vice President of Photography for onOne Software and a Tampa-based photographer. He's a best selling author of over 20 books and teaches Lightroom and Photoshop at seminars and conferences around the world.

Matt,
I love the pano idea but am having a little problem printing. When I change paper orientation to landscape the images rotate 90 degrees. I have set the identity plate to no rotate but that does not change things.

However, Lightroom won’t let me place the identity plate any lower on the page then the photos. As I grab and drag it down (anything lower then the bottom of the photo) it starts to disappear and doesn’t allow me to bring it any lower. Looking at your screen shots compared to mine- everything appears to be the same. Any suggestions?

I’m using an HP9180 printer that has an 11×4 borderless option. I can set up the 5 pano no problem but as soon as I save it as a preset it reconfigures the layout to portrait and redefines all the settings. When you hover over the preset the preview shows you what you would expect but the result is definitely not what you want. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a bug?

I love the features offered in Lightroom. However, I do very little if any printing in-house. Because of this I feel like I’m missing out on one of the key features of this product. Is it possible to use the print module of perform some of these custom layouts then export the resulting file for production elsewhere?

Hello:
I am having the same issues Motti is having. I took a look at cooksfriend’s advice but you can’t do anything that Matt is saying doing because setting the page size is the first step and that is what we are limited by.

I have LR on WIndows and when clicking Page setup the window that pops up is the same as the print settings. There is a custom option (only when I use a printer other than a Selphy) but there is no window to change paper size.

I tried using the printer properties but that will not give me size options.

In short I tried everything from PDF to Office document but it will not allow it.

It seems that LR really cares what printer you have and keeps you within the boundaries of that printer.

It should not be Adobe business what I use to print with. We should be able to create any size document and use ANY printer INCLUDING sending it a lab as Ron suggested.

Question: Say I created a custom sized print preset like 12″ x 24″ and I wanted to print it but I don’t have a printer. Where could I go to have a custom print like this made? Is there a website that I could upload my preset + photos and get a custom print sent to me? Is there a store I could go to? Thanks.

1. Take a square cropped image and be able to print it at a specific size on a common print size with solid color everywhere else. eg. 4.5″ square pic printed centered on 5×7 stock with rest of 5×7 stock blacked out for ease of trimming later. (now if I send a square crop pic to a 5×7, I get back a photo 7″ wide with top and bottom cut off. I need a way to pad the unused portion of the image before sending out)

2. Or do 5 across as shown on a common stock size say 12×16, and trim down later to different aspect ratio.

If someone can show me how I can turn the nice image layout that I can easily generate with the print module into a jpeg for transport to my local print shop, I’ll be much happier tackling the framing projects I’ve got lined up for this next month.

I think you can export JPEGS from the Library module, using File > Export (I think; I’m on a computer that doesn’t have LR). I believe LR may want to ‘burn’ an image to CD, but you can override it. Try it out.

really cool stuff lightroom,
but wouldnt it be even cooler if us photographers could use the print module to not just print from ink jet, but to save the file as a jpeg to send off to our photo lab and have it printed that way.
is there a way to do that we dont know? I guess it could be done from the web module and you could e-mail it to your self?
but what a time saver if you could just do it in the print module.

I have a tip re: Identity Plates in the Print Module, but didn’t know where to put it, so here goes…

Adobe cautions against using graphical ID Plate due to low-res printing, but I discovered that if you DRAG an .eps doc into the text field (vs. using the ‘Locate file’ option), you will preserve the vector properties of the .eps file. For some reason, using the ‘Locate file? option will give you a bitmapped graphic.

I print to PDFs from the Print Module, and figured this out thru trial and error.

hey matt, thanks again for the video! a couple of questions from the previous posts:
– i couldnt seem to access the ‘processing panos in LR’ video in itunes
– there are no videos in the itunes site if i subscribe to the feed